Many Habsburg rulers could be faulted for their almost aggressive hostility towards the arts and their refusal to use their unique position to create extraordinary things – Franz Joseph was notoriously depressing in this respect – but there were a number of exceptions: Charles V and Titian, Rudolf II and a whole panoply of mountebanks and oddballs, Ferdinand III and Rubens. None can really match up to Maximilian, though – his work with Dürer, Burgkmair and Altdorfer and a host of less well-known figures, as well as his support for the extraordinary music of Isaac and Senfl, makes him one of
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